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Celebrity Selfies as Art, Via John Baldessari

By Allan Kozinn October 20, 2014 4:34 pmOctober 20, 2014 4:34 pm

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An image of Miley Cyrus in Visionaire 64.Credit Visionaire

Less than a year has elapsed since Oxford Dictionaries declared “selfie” its word of the year for 2013, and though many people regarded selfies as an art form long before that the time has clearly come for formal recognition. Visionaire, a publisher that produces pricey limited editions (which it calls issues), is devoting its current issue, Visionaire 64, to works by the conceptual artist John Baldessari, who has used celebrity self-portraits provided for the project as his raw material.

Among those who took part were Ai Weiwei, Drew Barrymore, Yoko Ono, Miley Cyrus, Drake, Cameron Diaz, Dustin Hoffman and Neil Patrick Harris. (Although the issue’s commercial sponsor is Samsung Galaxy, the participants were not required to use that phone to take the selfies.) Mr. Baldessari altered the photographs by, in most cases, stripping them of color – and then adding some back, sometimes by tinting clothing and leaving the rest in black and white, and more typically by adding shapes in bright hues.

All told, Mr. Baldessari produced 30, 12-by-18-inch prints. Visionaire is selling them in three editions (“Red,” “Green” and “Blue”) of 500 copies each. Each edition includes 10 loose prints and sells for $325, so if you want all 30 Baldessari-modified selfies, you’re in for $975.

Or you can see them free in an exhibition in the lobby of the Chrysler Building, from Wednesday through Oct. 28. Some portraits will be presented as prints; others will be shown on electronic screens. Also part of the installation: enlarged versions of Mr. Baldessari’s color shapes will be placed throughout the lobby. Visitors can take selfies next to, behind or in front of the shapes and can post them to Twitter with the hash tag #64ART, to become part of an alternative (and virtual) gallery.

A version of this article appears in print on 10/22/2014, on page C3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Celebrity Selfies as Art, Via John Baldessari.